Neither the US nor China a free rider

Once upon a time, a man was arrested on the charge of leaking a State secret by claiming in public that the king of the kingdom was an idiot.

If Barack Obama meant it when he said that China has been a free rider, the president of the United States did the same as this man of old; as he was actually telling the world that the US policymakers over the past more than three decades were unwise enough to allow China to get away without paying what it should have paid for its ride to modernity.

The vice versa is also true.